


Call Me Whenever

by vivilove



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Comfort, F/M, Friendship/Love, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 15:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8849515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivilove/pseuds/vivilove
Summary: They had not been friends before really.  They had not meant to become friends.  They had intended to go on living their lives with little if any knowledge of the other’s life or any involvement beyond what was required by sharing her brother who was his best friend.  Sometimes fate has other plans for us though.  Or "How Jon and Sansa Became Friends"





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little drabble for fun.

They had not been friends before really. They had not meant to become friends. They had intended to go on living their lives with little if any knowledge of the other’s life or any involvement beyond what was required by sharing her brother who was his best friend. Sometimes fate has other plans for us though.

 

When Robb called to tell him that Sansa was going to attend the same university as Jon, he didn’t think much of it. Robb had asked that he look out for his little sister as she would be far from home. Jon had no problem with this. It’s not as though he didn’t like her. They just seemed to have so little in common. Robb had come to town to help her move into her dormitory and Jon went over to help…but mostly to see Robb. Before the two young men left to do some ‘catching up’, he gave Sansa his number.

“Call me whenever,” he said casually. “You know, if you need me…”

“Sure…thanks. Same here,” she responded and she gave him hers.

He never imagined he’d actually hear from her. They would go on living their separate lives. He had just started graduate school, she was a freshman. Their paths never even crossed on campus. Six months had passed when she called him for the first time.

 

**FEAR**

_‘What we fear of doing most is usually what we most need to do’_ –Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Hello?” he mumbled into the phone. It was nearly 2 o’clock in the morning. He’d fallen asleep on the couch grading papers. His hand shot out and grabbed the phone out of instinct, not even looking to see who had called him at this unholy hour.

“Jon?”

He had not spoken to her in six months. And before that, two years had passed since he had spoken to her but he knew her voice all the same.

“Sansa? What…is everything alright?”

He knew it wasn’t of course. Why would she call at this hour if everything was ‘alright’? Why would she call him at all? But more than that, he could plainly hear in her voice that everything was far from alright at this moment even though she had only spoken one word…his name.

“I…I didn’t know who else to call,” she said quietly.

A sob came out before she could stop it and her voice broke as he heard a small and helpless whine escape her lips. A sound that went slicing through his heart like an arrow. This was Robb’s little sister. The annoying little girl that followed them around the house in the summers begging them to play with her and crying if they refused. But, she was still Sansa, Robb’s little sister.

“What’s wrong?”

“I need a ride…I’m…I think I’m in trouble…I didn’t know who else to call…I’m sorry.”

“Where are you?”

“Uh…it’s a house…342 Dale Avenue. Joffrey…my boyfriend brought me here. He’s…he hurt me and I’m afraid. I locked myself in a bedroom upstairs. Please…I don’t’ have anyone else to call…I’m sorry.”

“I’m on my way,” he said as he was pulling on a sweatshirt and putting his glasses back on.

An hour later, Sansa was crying on his couch. He felt awkward at first trying to comfort her but, when he stopped worrying over the awkwardness of it and started focusing on the comforting part, he realized that this was something he could do for her…easily. She had been dating this Joffrey prick for four months. He had become abusive around a month ago. The marks on her wrists and the bruise on her cheek were from tonight but there were older marks she showed him and some she did not show.

“Why didn’t you call before? Or why not call Robb or your mother?”

“I was afraid.”

“You don’t have to be afraid. I’m here. I wouldn’t let any guy treat you this way if I knew.”

“I…I didn’t want to bother you. I thought I could handle it. I was…I felt like I was alone here and I felt stupid for letting things go on this long. I didn’t want you or Robb to know.”

“You’re not alone, Sansa. You can always call me…whenever you need me.”

“I want to leave him but I’m afraid.”

“You need to leave him though and I’ll be here for you. I promise.”

They spoke regularly after that night. Sansa screwed up her courage and left Joffrey even though it meant losing many of the people she had called her friends before things soured. He went with her when she filed a complaint. He helped her move out of her dorm and into a small apartment. She had asked Jon not to discuss Joffrey with Robb until she did and he had honored her wishes. He knew she would tell her brother in time and soon enough she did.

 

**EMBARRASSMENT**

_‘How embarrassing it is to be human.’_ -Kurt Vonnegut

They had started spending time together but it was still awkward at times. Years of knowing each other but not _really_ knowing each other made for uncomfortable silences at first. In time though they grew closer. She became his friend…his best friend in this town where they had no one else from before…no one else from home. Jon started thinking of himself as her surrogate big brother. He was glad to be there for her. What he did not know though was that he would need her to be there for him soon enough.

“Hey!” she answered, her voice full of sunshine and kitten kisses for so early in the morning.

“Sansa,” he said in a desperate whisper. “I need your help…God, this is embarrassing.”

He could’ve called Tormund but knew his friend would enjoy this far too much for Jon’s ego to handle at the moment. Sam was out of town. She was really the only option…she was really his _first_ option anyway to be honest.

“Of course…anything…What is it?”

“I’m…I had a fight with Val…uh, she threw me out…and I’m…standing outside her house…in my underwear. Christ…”

He could hear the slightest hint of a giggle in her voice but she immediately followed it with, “I’m on my way!”

He hid in the bushes watching for her car. He didn’t bother trying to beat on Val’s door again. If she’d not answered when he was trying to beat it down for ten minutes straight earlier, he didn’t think she’d answer now. She’d thrown his phone at him but not his clothes. He had rode to her house in her car so he didn’t have a way home other than walking…other than Sansa. Twelve minutes after he’d made his call, Sansa pulled up. He started to dart for the passenger side door when she got out with a plastic bag in hand.

“Here. Robb left these when he visited last month.”

Inside the bag was a pair of athletic shorts, the kind Robb usually wore to bed. And, there was a t-shirt from some local 5K.

“Is this your shirt?” he asked as he pulled the shorts up quickly behind the begonia bush next to Val’s porch.

“Yeah, it’s big on me so should fit you. Sorry, I didn’t have any shoes for you. Hey…do you want _your_ clothes back?”

“Um…yeah, I guess…but…”

“Hang on.”

She raced up to the front porch, taking two steps at a time with those long, lean legs of hers and knocked on the door before he could stop her. Jon stood there writhing with mortification but filled with curiosity as well. He heard Val shout for him to go away. Sansa spoke then, loud and clear and full of confidence.

“This isn’t Jon. I’m Sansa. I’m a friend of his. I don’t know what he did and maybe he deserves to be standing out here in his underwear but could you _please_ give him his clothes and shoes back? His shoes at least? It’s cold out here.”

The front door opened a few inches. He could hear their voices but couldn’t make out the words. He even heard a little laughter. A few minutes later, Sansa came bounding back down the porch stairs with his clothes and shoes in her arms.

“She says she’s sorry,” Sansa said as they headed to her car.

“Oh…well, that’s…I…”

“It’s okay, Jon. Whatever you need to figure out with her doesn’t have to be decided this morning. If you’re through, you’re through. If you’re not…well, maybe you’ll have a funny story to tell your grandkids someday.”

“At the moment, I’m really thinking we’re through but thanks. Thanks for coming to…to my rescue really.”

She laughed then and said, “Sure thing. You can always call me whenever you need rescuing.”

 

**LOVE**

_‘Every heart sings a song incomplete until another heart whispers back.’_ -Plato

For a little more than a year, their unexpected and unintended friendship grew. Jon didn’t go back to Val. Sansa would never go back to Joffrey. They spent more time together than many couples do but they were content as friends for that first year. They learned the things about each other that they’d never bothered to learn when Jon was watching cartoons with Robb on Saturday mornings at the Stark’s house and Sansa was playing alone in her bedroom with her Barbie dolls. They remembered the things about each other that they already knew but had forgotten that they knew like how much Sansa loved lemon cake and Shakespeare’s sonnets and how Jon had dreamed of riding a dragon when he was a boy and even what he named his pretend dragon on the rare occasions they played together. And, they were always there for one another. From the mundane to the monumental, they could always count on the other to come when they called.

Jon had a car accident and Sansa came to the hospital to see him, to take care of things. She drove him around for three weeks while his ankle healed and his car was repaired. He complained about the pain and the inconveniences of his circumstances but she never complained at all. Her steady, unwavering devotion to his care was a gift he didn’t realize he was being given at first because she gave it so effortlessly and without comment.

When Sansa got fired from her part-time job serving tables because her scumbag of a manager put the moves on her and she refused his advances...right before she kicked him in the balls, she locked her keys in her car in her frustration to get out of there. So, she called Jon…even though it was nearly midnight and he was teaching an 8 o’clock class that semester. He came at once. He helped her get her car unlocked and then took her for coffee and donuts. Sansa sat in the corner booth and raged and cried about the unfairness of it all. They both laughed when she told him what she did in retaliation. And, Jon listened to her…every word she said as they shared their coffee and box of donuts.

When his estranged father died of a sudden heart attack, it was Sansa that Jon called. She sat with him several nights as he tried to process it, tried to work through his grief, his regrets and his guilt. She attended the funeral with him and held his hand when it felt that his soul would surely fly away from this Earth if there wasn’t something to tether him to it. There was something to keep him tethered though and it was her, the friend he never meant to have.

In the end, when love finally came to replace friendship or when friendship grew into love, it was neither expected nor unexpected. It was tenuous and fragile yet stronger than steel. It was a whisper and a sigh and a shout and cry. The night they shared their first kiss, Robb had called to say he was getting married to his long-term girlfriend. It was not a surprise to either Jon or Sansa but, when Sansa asked Jon if he ever thought of marrying someday, he had responded ‘yes’ with heartfelt meaning as he kept his eyes on hers and he reached up to gently tuck a stray strand of her hair behind her ear. He shifted closer to her on the sofa in her living room before he asked the same question of Sansa. She drew her fingers lightly across his arm sending chills down his spine before she finally replied that she could only think of one person she would ever want to marry.

“Who?” he asked with a hopeful smile.

“I think you know,” she said softly as her hand moved to his face. “The person I can always call…whenever.”


End file.
